The original Godfather game more or less shadowed the original story. The Godfather II steps away a little bit and looks to follow Michael Corleone’s meeting with Hyman Roth in Havana. Aldo Trapani from the original is killed as the deal goes bad, which leaves you to play as Dominic. Here, you’ll essentially spend the game playing through and taking over New York, Miami and Havana from the rival families and building up the Corleone Empire. While you will still dance around the famous story, there is much less focus here than in the original game. Nor does the delivery convince you that the story is a primary focus of the game, which is a shame, given how good the actual story is.
In the original Godfather game, you went about your business in the typical sandbox manner, occasionally catching onto the story in between shenanigans. The Godfather II retains this format but mixes things up by implementing some basic strategy elements. As such, it’s almost The Sims: Godfather Edition but much more violent. Well, not quite, but this addition to the gameplay does make for an interesting idea that works reasonably well. However, the game really required as much time on the surrounding design for it to have truly stood out.
Devastated by shockingly good looks.
You start out by creating your Mob-face. While not really a tool for making a character of your likeness, you certainly can make a damn ugly mobster, if you were so inclined. Once you’ve moulded and clothed your ideal gangster, you then go about recruiting members to your own family. Initially, you start off with a few slots, and each made man has a distinct useful ability: medic, engineer, demolitions, brute, arsonist and safecracker. Eventually, you can promote them and upgrade them to have more abilities, which will come in handy for various situations. Throughout the game, you’ll be able to buy upgrades for yourself and your soldiers.
When observed as an action sandbox/strategy hybrid, the game starts to make a little sense. While you will spend most of your time over-the-shoulder, you can bring up the ‘Don’s view’ at anytime. Here, you’ll have all the information regarding who owns what from all three of the game’s cities. The way the strategy works here builds on the original game’s concept of taking over businesses known as rackets and fronts from the other families/gangs in the game. You basically play a big game of monopoly, where you take business from underneath the other families and drive them out of town (mind you, they can and will take back). Upon taking all businesses, you unlock their compound, which you then proceed to destroy.
A variety of considerations come into play, where you can weaken families by taking out their made men and breaking their bonuses by disjoining crime rings. Crime rings for example, may be all the construction sites in town. Take one down and the family loses the bonus, then proceed to own all of them and the bonus is yours. Bonuses are related to the crime ring and come in a nice variety, from bullet-proof vests to faster health regeneration. Taking down made men first requires you to do a favour for a random person. The favours aren’t difficult but they do come off as arbitrary. Upon completion, you’ll be given the location and kill condition. You also have the chance to do favours for important officials, who in turn will grant bonuses such as calling off the cops or speedy recoveries for your crew.
Eventually, these will all be yours.
Taking over businesses comes in two flavours. You can send your made men to deliver the irrefutable offer via the Don’s View, or get it done yourself. Barging in and taking out all the guards, you proceed to extort the owner by intimidating them in a variety of ways via the Blackhand system. While there are a variety of ways to get this done, it’s disappointing that the system hasn’t been made more malleable since the original. There just isn’t as much creativity as there could be. Businesses can also be shutdown by being bombed, burnt down or sabotaged (both manually or by sending in troops to do it for you). This is useful in weakening a family but not as essential as it could be.
While somewhat basic, the strategy aspect of the game is well put together for an action title. It requires a good mix of attention, nous and luck without ever really stretching it. The sandbox and action aspects unfortunately come off rather middling. For an open-ended game, there really isn’t too much to explore in the three small builds of the cities and none are particularly compelling to traverse. Havana is particularly annoying thanks to a dearth of cars. Admittedly, there are many more indoor environments. The vehicles are based on cars from the 1950s and while their handling is passable, the vehicles are really heavy and make for some hard crashes.
The action itself is just as it was in the original. Some of the environments and mechanics cater for large set pieces with cover and the works, but again, the controls only just get the job done. There are numerous frustrating environmental design choices that have you working like a rat in a maze to get through some of the action pieces. Funnily, your cronies are very strong on their own, without being particularly smart. This makes them ideal for raiding enemy establishments, but can make the game very easy and upgrades seem arbitrary. And while the game has your usual punishment mechanisms, they really have little bearing on the game and are easy to avoid. The hard part comes from doing the arbitrary favours or wondering around for vague objectives.
Just try and mess with us.
Both you and your family members can have money spent on them to make them better, but you'll find that they often die less than you. A novel addition to the game is the ability to upgrade your weapon’s license for your cronies by sending them online for some standard and game specific set of multiplayer modes. As you play, progress and win, these characters will be able to use better weapons within the single player. This is a nice incentive to jump into the multiplayer to extend the 15 hour campaign, but one that doesn’t really make a difference at the end of the day.
Graphically, the game is fairly average. Sure, it’s nice to have some colour, there are nice expansive indoor environments and the Don’s view is aesthetically pleasing. However, most of the common problems crop up, from a sometimes erratic frame rate (strangely more prevalent at night) to recycled models and architecture. The audio is a much stronger component, though it too suffers from repetition, particularly when you’re out and about looking for favours. The actual voicing is some of the strongest (and authentic) we’ve heard in a while, but just like the story, the actual delivery could have been so much more.
The Godfather II is a solid action game that does well to try and add something substantial to the sandbox action genre. And while the strategy element doesn’t recreate the genre or reach its potential heights, it works. The problem being, this new element is dragged back by a solid though outdated template that has too many arbitrary elements and borders on being too easy. In one final insult, the game would have ironically been better off without the title stamped on it, and simply labelled a 'mafia simulator'. This may be an offer that you’ll refuse, but in these quiet times, you could do a lot worse.
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